


restless rust

by meanderingsoul



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Relationships, Episode Tag, First Aid, Gen, Injury, Introspection, Male-Female Friendship, Minor Character Death, Season/Series 03, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:53:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23765668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanderingsoul/pseuds/meanderingsoul
Summary: Somehow he didn’t take a swing when tiny little hands started trying to wipe some of the blood off his face with a bit of cloth. It wasn’t gentle, they had to be quick before someone decided to take interest, but May was not a bit rougher than necessary.
Relationships: Lance Hunter & Melinda May, Lance Hunter/Bobbi Morse
Comments: 14
Kudos: 36





	restless rust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [agentmmayy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentmmayy/gifts).



> Set in the aftermath of Hunter and May's fights in 3x03.

May helped him pull his jacket back on after he must have been out of sight of Hydra thug number two, the shirt wasn’t enough, would end up as a rag at this point. Guy with a face like an old rugby ball stayed in his shitty office. He’d only committed that whole conversation to memory through tricks he’d learned from Bob.

Spud hadn’t been on the ground anymore when they left. Hunter tried to be grateful.

Mostly he was dizzy. May’s fist was tugging around the back of his jacket, steering him along.

The bright afternoon light outside was very unwelcome. Hunter lurched forward against May’s grip to spit blood and too much saliva on the gravel.

“Can you make it to the car?”

They hadn’t wanted to park too close in case the shit hit the proverbial fan, risk someone slashing the tires or worse. Hunter nodded with his eyes squeezed shut.

Somehow he didn’t take a swing when tiny little hands started trying to wipe some of the blood off his face with a bit of cloth. It wasn’t gentle, they had to be quick before someone decided to take interest, but May was not a bit rougher than necessary.

Leaning forward gave all the bones in his face a heartbeat. Damn.

Hunter gingerly reopened an eye. “Let’s just get the fuck out of here.”

*

When May locked the door of their shitty motel room behind them he let out a shaky breath, stood still while May checked the rooms and out the windows before she went back out to move the car out of sight from the street.

She’d had to help him walk up here as it was. Hunter limped into the kitchenette, opened the freezer and that was just about as far as he could get with all that.

He was still standing in front of the open door with his hands against the cold white surface when May came back in. It was kind of slimy in there actually. She’d brought ice from downstairs, the scratchy little towels from the bath.

“Hunter. _Hunter._ ”

“What’s that?” he slurred.

“Get your jacket off before you stiffen up and sit down before you fall.”

That sounded pretty reasonable. He started to shrug and almost shouted. May pulled the jacket down his arms without being asked, kicked a chair out from the table so he could half-fall into it.

“Hey.”

Hunter squinted up at her, confused until he realized she was checking his eyes. Apparently he’d do because she turned to the fridge and grabbed them both a beer.

He sat and watched her drink because he wasn’t _blind_ and also the adrenaline crash was making him stupid.

“Drink up,” she finally said. “You’ve got abrasions and we need to check your teeth.”

His fingers were stiffening up, knuckles red, but he could hold the beer alright with his left hand. It stung in his mouth. Swishing it around a bit made it worse.

Hunter went ahead and guzzled half of the beer before he said, “One’s loose right now for sure. Can’t tell if I chipped any. We got wax for it?”

Dental wax could help keep it still at least. It might heal up if he didn’t catch any fists with his face for a while, but that would honestly be a small miracle.

“I don’t make useless first aid kits,” May said with a scoff.

“Never doubted you love.”

She stayed quiet, sipping at her beer while he finished his off.

“Have we got any more?” He knew they did, but he didn’t really want to ask her to get him another. Or have to tell her she might have to open it for him. The bruises across the fronts of his right fingers were coming up red and dark. He hadn’t tried to find the brass knuckles that had been tossed aside after the fight.

May set another bottle down by him with a quiet clink and moved out of his line of sight.

Hunter drank. His mouth didn’t sting so much anymore, but his head was pounding. Spud had half got ahold of his left ear at some point, got in a good squeeze before he’d lost his grip. Fucking Spud.

Hunter gingerly pressed the half-full cold bottle against it with a hiss, closed his eyes.

“Hey.”

“I’m awake,” he mumbled.

When he cracked an eye she set something cold over his right hand, one of the little towels wetted down and wrapped around ice.

“Don’t clench your jaw,” was all she said before fingertips started pressing along the bones in his face.

Hunter said _ow_ but it was halfhearted. His jaw and left cheekbone were one mass of noise at this point. The left side was worse off than the right, usually was, but he couldn’t tell if there were any particularly fucked spots right now. He figured she knew what she was looking for without input anyway.

“How the hell is your nose not broken?” she muttered.

It was still bleeding down the back of his throat a bit, but it hadn’t felt broken to him either. “Told ya, I can take a punch.”

The look on her face said it all. Hunter swallowed around the urge to start laughing.

“I don’t think anything’s fractured, but we can’t know for sure until you can get an x-ray.”

“I’ve definitely heard that I need my head examined before.”

May ignored him. “You’ve got some cuts on your shoulders and your right side, but they aren’t deep. Edges aren’t right for a knife?”

“Not much technique in that fight. Decent amount of slamming a bloke into the walls and hoping for the best. Weren’t you watching?” he asked.

“Probably better if we just cut your shirt off. Lidocaine?”

She really did have all the good stuff in her kit. “Don’t bother, won’t last. I’m going to get in that tub and have a soak after this even if I catch something.”

“Got it. I can still go ahead and glue a couple of the ones on your face after they’re clean.”

“Please do. I can’t afford to lose my good looks.”

That finally earned a faint snort, score.

It didn’t take much to cut his shirt off; she didn’t even make him move. May grabbed a bottle of water from somewhere out of his line of sight. Hunter had no plans to twist his neck around anytime soon. He could feel the grit shift when she splashed water over the scrapes to rinse them out.

Hydra wasn’t big on doing the sweeping up. What a surprise.

The sting of the alcohol made him hiss. Other than that, it was silent in here, nothing but the ticking fridge.

“You’re good at this,” he finally said. Couldn’t even string together a joke about it. He didn’t want to say he was surprised she was being this kind, cause honestly he wasn’t. He might rub May the wrong way a lot of the time, but for better or worse he had the personality he had and May really didn’t seem to enjoy that many people’s company anyway.

But there was more to both of them than that.

That particular small, crooked grin seemed to be a multipurpose expression for her. “I’m usually on the other side of this. I know what helps.”

Of course she knew, well-trained fighting machine like Agent May, but it made him wonder who did this for her. It was different when it was work situations. He’d been in military hospitals a couple times; there was a distance to it all, kept everyone sane probably. Lord knows he’d about lost it in the back of the car with Izze. In that room with Bobbi, nothing in his nose and mouth but copper.

This kind of thing here was just different. Carrying Bobbi to the shower and back had been different. Somebody had obviously been around to get her a drink after a beating, to check over the injuries she was too tired to care much about because other medical attention wasn’t going to be available for a while.

Hunter closed his eyes when May started gluing one of the splits on his face closed.

The good doctor had probably been allowed, there was no doubt he’d been happy making a fuss over his ex-wife. Coulson made sense; he knew from Bob they’d used to be something of a field team. The guy also knew a lot more about medical stuff than he generally let on. That had become obvious over those first couple months while his arm healed, through the first couple prototypes for a new hand.

Dr. Garner had really left her then. Jesus. That was a lot of money down the drain. Something was very wrong about that whole picture. May getting sick of people hovering, that made sense. May going AWOL thinking Ward was looking to have her dad killed, that even made a decent amount of sense as far as he was concerned. This didn’t make sense.

When he opened his eyes, best he could at least, May was expressionless again. She handed him another wet little towel, ice for his face.

Hunter finally noticed her hands, saw how the right knuckles were redder than the left, a scrape on one palm. What the…? “When did you throw some punches?”

May turned that dark, inscrutable stare on him before she sighed. “During the fight. Three wannabes thought they were gonna buy me a drink.”

“… _christ_.”

She shrugged. “Nobody saw. And they aren’t going to talk.”

“Bloody hell that is not what I’m cursing about!” It wasn’t like he hadn’t been a bit _busy_ , but he hadn’t seen anything, hadn’t heard anything, and it was the damn principle of it all!

“Like it’s the first time I’ve pulled that play. And you were right. It was good to stretch my legs,” she said, a bit more grimly than he would have expected, even for having to admit he was right.

There was nothing to be said to any of that. He knew Bobbi had pulled that move before too, either lured or played along with some idiots who ended up having very bad days. It still terrified him every time.

“Think I’m gonna soak for a bit,” he said eventually. The table squealed on the floor and the empty beer bottle rattled, but he managed to get on his feet without help.

Hunter let the shower run aimed at the sides of the tub until it was warm-ish and then called the thing clean enough, turned the drain closed with the side of his foot and shook a good amount of Epsom salt out of the carton. It’d sting, but he knew it would help.

His hands were really starting to stiffen, took a few tries to thumb his trousers open. He let them slide to the floor but left his skivvies on cause there was no way she wasn’t going to have to help him back out of this tub.

It was a clumsy lurch to sit down and he cursed energetically to himself when the hot salt water finally hit all the scrapes. His knees had scuffed through his jeans where he’d hit the ground a few times, not surprising. His forearms and elbows weren’t much better.

Wasn’t so bad after a minute. Hunter squirmed to get lower in the water with a sigh. He’d be pretty damn colorful in a couple hours.

May framed in the doorway with her boots off was quite a sight. There was knowing she was a tiny person and then there was seeing it. 

“How long do we have before we need to move?” she asked.

“That Hydra middle-management sort with a couple screws loose wants to see me by tomorrow night.” He’d said it with a bit of a laugh too, the bastard. None of this was going to be on the mend by then.

“Bruised your back like this before?”

She knew exactly how bad tomorrow was going to suck. So did Hunter.

“I’ll live,” he said.

Spud wouldn’t, the stupid bastard went unsaid. I didn’t mean to kill him went unsaid

May knew all that. Didn’t tell him it had to be done or wasn’t his fault or any of the other stupid shit people who didn’t sometimes kill people for a living said.

They both knew damn well sometimes when you hit people that hard that many times they just died.

“Let me know when you want out. I hear a splash I’m coming back.”

“Not worried about getting an eyeful love?” Hunter quipped on instinct.

May snorted openly. “ _Please_ ,” she said with a bit of an eye roll before she left him to it. 

Hunter opened his mouth to pretend at being offended, but laughed a bit under his breath instead. If Bobbi came through that door right now in that outfit from Lisbon years ago and climbed in the tub with him he still wouldn’t get anywhere with it.

Surprisingly good sense of humor, Agent May, when you knew what to look for.

Hunter gingerly leaned his head back against the tub and closed his eyes.

*

He’d had to switch from beers to watered down Gatorade at some point between May helping him climb out of the tub and finally passing the fuck out, trying to keep muscle cramps at bay, keep his head from splitting tomorrow.

It caught up with him sometime in the middle of the night, bladder like a bowling ball and three tries now and he hadn’t been able to sit up to get out of this squashy bed.

He could ask May for a hand again or he could roll over until he could slide to the floor, work on standing or not standing from that point, but that much noise would definitely wake her anyway.

May was actually sound asleep.

She’d been awake first every day of this job so far and he hadn’t been convinced she was dozing off before he did these last several days they’d holed up planning. She might even be snoring now. It was muffled and he was going to pretend he’d never heard it.

Turned out Melinda May slept in a little ball when she was alone in the bed, one leg tucked neatly behind the other and head tucked down towards her fists. He wondered if she was the type to sprawl out at home and nowhere else, or if she’d curled up on her husband’s shoulder.

He and Bob were rubbish at snuggling most of the time. They both ran too warm, too many angles, too many shins. But he’d gotten used to waking up with the back of her hand resting on his belly again, to being able to tuck his face against her shoulder when he woke up in the night. Hunter had let himself get used to being able to smell her on the sheets again despite himself.

“May?”

Even just saying her name once got a grunt and a rustle, her head ticking up in the dark.

“Sorry May. Could use a hand.”

Even half-asleep May seemed to put it together, walked over silently and helped pull him to the edge of the useless mattress, got her shoulder under his so he could stand.

Once he had his feet he was all right. Hunter lurched to the bathroom in the dark hunched over like he’d aged thirty years overnight, but it was _so_ worth it. His fingers felt like they should creek when he moved them and his thighs wanted to shake standing still, but that was just how this went.

He still made himself stop after one glass of water. Better not risk it twice in one night.

He heard her turn over as soon as he’d successfully laid down again in a clumsy crawl with only some cursing. May was back to snoring quietly in a little ball in moments. Sleeping the sleep of the just and all that.

Or, just someone else who knew exactly how to sleep right now before I don’t get another chance. Hunter knew how it was.

They were the same kind of animal, deep down.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was prompted in a conversation about 3x3 with agentmmay ages ago (this came together so incredibly slowly omg I'm so sorry) and exists because I am too stubborn for my own good and preux listened to me complain at length more than twice.
> 
> Title is from Animal by Def Leppard. I couldn't snip a title for this out of Love Bites unfortunately. I also genuinely could not pass up the opportunity to use Spud as a character tag.


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